Posts tagged ‘Lara’

Boldman, Saviuk and Schaffenberger share the last in-continuity pre-Crisis Superman story in Action 582 (Aug. 86).

After having a number of vivid dreams about Jor-El and Lara, Superman discovers that there are two other, distinct, brain-waves in his head. He believes these two be the minds of his parents, somehow preserved within him.

He creates clone bodies for them, and is thrilled when the brain-waves transfer from his mind into the bodies, animating them and bringing his parents back to life. He provides them with human identities, and shows them around Metropolis, and Earth, while helping them adjust to their new powers.

Superman brings them to his Fortress of Solitude, but when he shows them the Phantom Zone viewer, he is surprised that the villains, General Zod, Jax-Ur, Professor Vakox and Faora, are cursing him, and not his father, the man who invented the Zone and sent many of them there.

And, indeed, his parents are not his real parents. How the Phantom Zone villains could tell is not clear, but once Superman suspects them, they drop the act and try to kill him. They put him in a rocket and fire him into space.

Superman escapes from the rocket, but spots a familiar ship orbiting Earth. It belongs to Rokk and Sorban, the compulsive gamblers from Ventura. Frequent guests in Superman’s own comic, and World’s Finest, back in the 60s, this is their first, and only, appearance in Action. They used some “free-floating” consciousnesses for Jor-El and Lara, but the bet at the core was whether Superman would be angry enough to kill the phonies, or not.

The story ends as Superman takes Rokk and Sorban to the “prison planet,” (Takron-Galtos?) Superman shows little concern about what the phony Jor-El and Lara are up to, loose on Earth, with all their powers. But the gamblers assure Superman that they will return to their non-corporeal state.

Action 500 (Oct. 79) is an oversize special, which does a good job of providing a fairly comprehensive story of Superman.

Bates, Swan and Chiaramonte choose a big public tour of a new Superman pavilion as the framing device for the tale. The various rooms give focus to different parts of the story.

There is also a machine at the exposition which draws out Superman’s memories, so that people can enjoy his grief as he recalls Jor-El and Lara, and his early life on Krypton. But a mystery villain is making use of the device, channeling the memories into a Superman duplicate he is creating.

The creation of the Phantom Zone is referenced, as well as Krypto on a test rocket.

The Kents are shown, finding the boy and raising him, both through his Superbaby phase, and later Superboy.

The story often uses exact swipes of scenes and images from earlier stories. The death of Pa Kent duplicates the first telling of the event.

As does the farewell message from the people of Smallville.

Clark Kent’s life in Metropolis is shown, getting the job from Perry White at the Daily Planet, and working with Lois Lane and Jimmy Olsen. Morgan Edge’s takeover is related, with Steve Lombard making an appearance.

Supergirl gets her own room in the pavilion, and a montage of her career. Other aspects are really downplayed. The Legion of Super-Heroes appear, in their current line-up, in the Superboy room, but are not talked about.

Still, Lori Lemaris does make it into the triptych of his loves, along with Lois and Lana.

The villain room is the most notable – for its absences. Aside from Luthor and Brainiac, only the Toyman and Parasite are shown. Brainiac has his story told in depth, as it relates to Kandor.

The mystery villain turns out to be Lex Luthor, which is not that much of a surprise.

And the duplicate gives himself away when he relates Luthor’s origin from Luthor’s own, very slanted, view.

As a story, this leaves something to be desired. But as a Superman compendium, it works.

He encounters some astronauts, frozen in suspended animation for centuries, and revives them in the year 801,970.

Travelling even further into the future, he reaches a time when the entire planet is dead and devoid of life. If those are different. Anyway, he cuts the planet open and terraforms it, and brings life forms, including humans, from other worlds to populate it and start the cycle again.

There is a very unexpected attack from Lex Luthor. He had never believed Superman dead, and left behind a weapon, powered by his eternal hate, to kill him. It fails.

Superman travels even further ahead, but Time Trapper loops him, and sends him back to the start. He blacks out, waking to find himself a baby in his parents arms on Krypton. A few more blackout time jumps, and Superman is back to where he was at the start of the saga.

Which is a bit of a let-down finish, if you ask me.

Bridwell, Mortimer and Abel share one of the oddest Legion stories. Every single member appears. Even the Super-Pets appear. And I’m tagging them ALL.

And the board is also worth noting, on the first page. The Legionnaires appear in the order they joined the team. Supergirl is located between Star Boy and Brainiac 5, while Superboy is later, between Shrinking Violet and Sun Boy.

An evil tax man shows up, and the Legion discover that they have to get rid of one member, or have to pay taxes. As they do not actually make money by being the Legion, I’m not sure what they would be taxed on, but it’s enough of a threat that they all start vying to be the one to leave. Timber Wolf and Chemical King are the first to offer, being the most recent to join.

The team attempt to hold a random draw, but it gets rigged, and then everyone starts claiming responsibility for rigging it.

Supergirl insists that she should be the one to leave, as she attends the fewest meeting. Brainiac 5 is not happy, and the Super-Pets all but revolt, insisting that they will disband if she leaves.

Brainiac 5 is selected by the computer as the hero who performed the fewest feats, but everyone insists his mind is worth more than just feats.

Finally, it is Superboy who chooses to leave. His powers are duplicated by Mon-El, and he has no romance or clinging pets, as Supergirl does. Notice that Krypto would resign if Supergirl left, but not Superboy.

Duo Damsel is the one most upset about his departure. Luornu’s unrequited love for Superboy would be touched on again in the future.

For many of the characters, this was the last appearance they have before the end of the Legion’s run in Action Comics. Ironically, this is also the last appearance of the full line up of the Super-Pets, as Beppo does not appear again, aside from flashbacks in comprehensive Superman origin tales.

Sadly, there is little that actually happens in this issue. It begins by recapping the story so far, and then turns into a reviewof Superman’s life, as it all passes through his mind as he travels through space. We get Jor-El and Lara sending him off from Krypton, and teh Kents finding and raising him. Lana Lang is introduced, and the origin of LexLuthor retold.

As Superman’s body passes Lexor, the people rise in revolt against Lex for killing Superman. Ardora tries to get the mob to calm down, but I expect she had some rough days ahead of her. In fact, we do not see Ardora again until the 80s, although Lexor appears in World’s Finest tale in the mid-70s.

Superman recalls his time with the Legion of Super-Heroes, and later Batman and Robin, and the Justice League. Lori Lemaris, and then his time at the Daily Planet, with Perry White, Jimmy Olsen, and Lois Lane.

Brainiac, Kandor and Supergirl get a page devoted to their tale.

He passes Bizarro World, and they shower him with all the forms of kryptonite. Just before he plunges into the heart of a star, Supergirl flies out Lois, Lana and Lori, to watch and mourn.

Swan and Kaye handle the Superman story, which sees two Durlans come to Earth and create a red kryptonite sculpture, to draw Superman’s attention. These beings are not called Durlans in the story, but are meant to be from the same planet as Chameleon Boy, so clearly are. The word had simply not yet been coined.

Three different red kryptonite meteors were used, so Superman has three different effects during the course of the story. The first allows his wishes to come true, as he discovers when Sherlock Holmes manifests to explain to the situation, a result of an inadvertent wish.

So Superman wishes both sets of his parents back into existence, and Jor-El and Lara get to briefly meet Ma and Pa Kent, before this power wears off. It gets replaced by flame breath, which causes Superman a bit of trouble.

Back at the Daily Planet, current events impinge upon their reality, as Perry intends to send Lois and Clark out to cover the summit between JFK and Kruschev. Jimmy sulks about not being picked to go.

As he arrives for the summit, the third red kryptonite effect takes hold, giving Superman mind-reading powers. Thanks to this, he knows the two world leaders are not real, and are being impersonated by the Durlans. Superman knocks them both out, and frees the real men.

Supergirl also falls prey to red kryptonite in Siegel and Mooney’s story, but this is really her own fault.

Being immune to green kryptonite, Supergirl believes herself immune to all its variants, and rounds up six red kryptonite meteors. But Mr. Mxyzptlk only envisioned green kryptonite when he cast his spell, and Linda falls prey to three effects during the course of the tale.

To make matters worse, these hit while she is out on a date with Dick Malverne. She grows to massive size, and hides by blending in with out parade balloons.

Then she turns into a Wolfgirl, while she and Dick are at the movies. In this guise, she does manage to stop a director, who felt he had run out of horror ideas, from killing himself. Instead he sets out to make a Wolfgirl movie.

When she shrinks to microscopic size, Supergirl finds this advantageous, as it allows her to assist in on operation on Dick’s father.

Jor-El gets to star in the lead story in Action 223 (Dec. 56), by Hamilton, Boring and Kaye.

Superman goes hunting in space for remnants of Krypton, and finds some good chunks that contain his father’s lab and journal. At this point, the notion that the planet turned to kryptonite upon exploding has clearly not been solidified, as Superman has no trouble in the ruins.

The rest of the story is Jor-El’s journal, and we see the scientist discover the impending destruction of his world.

Jor-El picks Earth as the destination for his escape rocket, after re-creating its gravity in a valley, and discovering that it will endow Kryptonians with super-powers. The idea that sunlight is the key to the powers has not yet been introduced.

Jor-El even gets to use these powers to fight crime and protect the Earth, preventing some Kryptonian thieves from stealing his rocket plans to invade Earth.

Lara is completely side-lined in this story, just hovering around as Jor-El sends his son to safety at the climax of the tale.

This was the first story to feature Jor-El and life on Krypton, but it would spawn many more.

Action 149 (Oct. 50) has the earliest version of the romance between Jor-El and Lara. A version that has been entirely dropped from continuity, for very good reasons.

Al Plastino handles the art as a rocket lands on Earth, apparently just outside Metropolis. Lois Lane is covering the story, and finds three Kryptonian discs in the wreckage, which just happen to record how Jor-El and Lara came to be married. Figuring that this will give her insights into winning Superman, she plays the discs.

The whole story is just shameful, so sexist. Lara is portrayed as a dim-witted, love-sick woman, and Jor-El her brilliant and patient beau. The first disc has Lara trying to win Jor-El through cooking, which Lois emulates, although it turns out disastrously.

Lara failed in her culinary attempts as well, and then set out to clean Jor-El’s lab, while wearing what appears to be an evening gown.

Lara’s cleaning winds up causing a fire, and Jor-El decides to marry her, because she is so incompetent and needy. Wow. That’s just. I’m so glad this story fell out of canon.

The Tommy Tomorrow series jumps ahead to being set in 2050, a round hundred years from the present day, and a much more comfortable amount of time in the future than forty years. Swan and Fischetti do the art on this story, which is really much the same as almost every Hollywood based story, despite it’s science fiction locales.

Some one is sabotaging the production of a movie, and Tommy is assigned to find the culprit. Along the way,he acts to prevent acts of sabotage, all of which gets caught on film.

In the end, Tommy stops the one trying to halt the production, and winds up starring in a hit film.

Dan Barry takes the gradual development of the Vigilante’s motorcycle a dramatic step forward with the introduction of the Vigilante-cycle in this story.

An inventor presents Vigilante with a new, upgraded version of his bike. He is hoping to make money selling copies, with the Vigilante’s endorsement. There is a rival businessman, trying to buy the rights to the bike for less than they are worth. He insists the cycle is unsafe, so Vigilante runs a series of highly publicized tests. The rival tries to sabotage these.

That’s the plot in a nutshell. The rest of the story demonstrates the impressive array of abilities this cycle has – everything but flight, though it can do rocket-powered leaps. A successful “upgrade” of the series, in an increasingly technophiliac age.